Complicated: Sequestration and Syria

The White House has pledged to step up its support for the Syrian rebels. | AP Photo

“Continued cuts on the scale and the timeline of sequestration will require significant reductions in military capabilities and the scope of our activities around the world,” Hagel told a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday.

And Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said setting up a no-fly zone in Syria would cost more than setting one up in Libya in 2011 because of Syria’s more advanced air defense systems.

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“I’m not saying we couldn’t beat that system, but it would be a greater challenge, take longer and require greater resources,” Dempsey said in April.

Still, even though there’s no question that sequestration has resulted in a net loss to readiness, researcher Jacob Stokes, of the Center for a New American Security, said that won’t change the U.S.’s basic military options there.

“The U.S. military remains overwhelmingly the most powerful and capable military force on the planet,” Stokes said. “In other words, if we need to intervene in Syria, we certainly have that capability, even under sequestration.”

And especially given the fact that U.S. intervention will most likely be small-scale, sequester could amount to a minor factor, he added.

“Although it appears the president has now decided we are getting more involved, the likelihood of another boots-on-the ground intervention in Syria is very low,” Stokes said. “Doing another large scale [counterinsurgency] operation would have been tough on the force regardless of whether sequestration occurred.”

Some of sequestration’s longtime critics agreed and kept up their drumbeat on Friday.

James Jay Carafano of the conservative Heritage Foundation said McKeon was not overstating the effect of sequester on readiness if there were a need for military intervention in Syria.

“People think that DoD is this massive organization with almost unlimited resources,” he said. “What people don’t realize is, it is a bigger infrastructure than anything else, but when it actually comes to the pointy end of the spear, it’s not a bottomless well.”

Cutting back on defense spending also caused problems when the U.S. was deciding on a strategy in Bosnia and Kosovo during the Clinton era, he added.

“I can remember very senior generals coming in saying, ‘I think Kosovo’s going to break the back of the Army,’ and that was like a 17,000-man deployment,” Carafano said.

Carafano added that while he doesn’t support intervention in Syria, he believes lawmakers who say sequestration will have an impact on readiness to execute whatever military strategy the White House decides on.

“But the notion that sitting there saying, ‘If we had to do an intervention, we’d be kind of scrambling, and we would be robbing Peter to pay Paul,’ that doesn’t surprise me to hear people say that,” he said.

Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute added that all branches of the military would need to scramble in case of a no-fly zone in Syria.

“I would never sort of imply that a no-fly zone is only an Air Force job because presumably, there’d be Navy fighter and Marine Corps help as well, and possibly logistics from the Army,” she said.

But the Air Force especially could have a hard time producing the force necessary to institute a no-fly zone, or at least one at full strength, she added.

“There is a legitimate problem. There’s a couple of things happening in the Air Force right now as a result of sequestration today, not sequestration in 2014. The Air Force has a quarter to a third of all of its combat aircraft and pilots grounded. It does not mean the Air Force can’t execute a no-fly zone. It does mean, however, that it takes longer to get ready, success might be achieved at a slower rate, and there’s a likelihood for greater risk of casualties.”